PEOPLE WHO PRAISE AND PRAY

CHAPTER 14

PEOPLE WHO PRAISE AND PRAY


"Missions exists because worship doesn't." These striking words in the opening paragraph of John Piper's book Let the Nations be Glad lead us dramatically into the final chapter of our survey of biblical themes. Quite rightly Piper points out that the ultimate reason for the church's existence is to glorify God by worshiping and enjoying him for all eternity. And because the world is still full of people who are not worshiping and enjoying the living God, the mission of the church is to bring them into the fold of those who do. There is a self-evident truth about this, and it needs to be endorsed here before we go any further.


WORSHIP AS THE GOAL OF MISSION

The goal of all our mission is the worship and glory of the one true living God. That's because the goal of all human life is to love, worship, glorify and enjoy God. That is where our own deepest fulfillment and flourishing lie. The satisfaction of our ultimate human potential as creatures made in the image of God is completely at one with the worship and glory of God.

  Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever. Worship is, therefore, the fuel and the goal of missions.
John Piper1

To put it another way, we are most fully ourselves as human beings when we are in a relationship with God in which God is glorified in and through our enjoyment of that relationship. That is why the biblical pictures of life in the new creation can combine so seamlessly descriptions of human life in its richest perfection and the worship of God in all his splendour, for each will be part of the substance of the other (Isa. 65:17–25; Rev. 21–22).
The mission of God, therefore, is that dynamic divine love that drives God to seek the ultimate well-being and blessing of human beings by bringing them into a relationship with himself in which they love, worship, and glorify him, and find their greatest joy in doing so. So also the mission of God's people is to be agents of that redemptive love of God. We live to bring others to worship and glorify the living God, for that is where they will find their greatest and eternal fulfillment and joy. For that reason, we should see evangelism not as something we are imposing on others but as the best thing we could ever do for them in the long run.
That is how Paul saw the ultimate goal of his own mission—and not only his own, but indeed, the mission of Jesus Christ. At the end of his letter to the Romans, Paul sums up his whole argument in the book and relates it to his own life's work. God's great mission, as he had said in the opening verses of the letter, is to bring all nations to faith's obedience (Rom. 1:5). That is, in fulfillment of his promise to Abraham and through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, God is bringing people of all nations into that place of redemptive blessing that is constituted (as it was for Abraham) by trusting in God and demonstrating that trust through obedient living. The gospel is the message that makes that possible and the power that accomplishes it.
Having stated this at the outset of the letter, Paul returns to it at the end (Rom. 16:26),2 but with amplified emphasis on how this work of the gospel in bringing all nations to the obedience of faith is ultimately for the glory of God and a matter of joy for the nations. It is worth hearing Paul's own excitement in piling up Old Testament Scriptures in support of this great prospect, and in seeing how he links the self-sacrificing servanthood of the Messiah Jesus and his own missionary apostleship in accomplishing it. Bear in mind as you read this passage that "the Gentiles" are "the nations"—it is the same word in Greek—ta ethne. The variation in translation in most English versions can obscure this important point in Paul's theology and practice of mission. Paul saw his mission in thoroughly Abrahamic terms: blessing to all nations on earth. What could be more joy-generating than that?

  For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews on behalf of God's truth, so that the promises made to the patriarchs might be confirmed and, moreover, that the Gentiles [nations] might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written:

      "Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles [nations];
         I will sing the praises of your name."3

  Again, it says,

      "Rejoice, you Gentiles [nations], with his people."4

  And again,

      "Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles [nations];
         let all the peoples extol him."5

  And again, Isaiah says,

      "The Root of Jesse will spring up,
         one who will arise to rule over the nations;
         in him the Gentiles [nations] will hope."6

  … I have written you quite boldly on some points to remind you of them again, because of the grace God gave me to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles [nations]. He gave me the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles [nations] might become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

  If God desires every knee to bow to Jesus and every tongue to confess him, so should we. We should be "jealous" (as Scripture sometimes puts it) for the honour of his name—troubled when it remains unknown, hurt when it is ignored, indignant when it is blasphemed, and all the time anxious and determined that it shall be given the honour and glory which are due to it. The highest of all missionary motives is neither obedience to the Great Commission (important as that is), nor love for sinners who are alienated and perishing (strong as that incentive is, especially when we contemplate the wrath of God) but rather zeal—burning and passionate zeal—for the glory of Jesus Christ.… Before this supreme goal of the Christian mission, all unworthy motives wither and die.
John Stott7

  Therefore I glory in Christ Jesus in my service to God. I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles [nations] to obey God by what I have said and done—by the power of signs and wonders, through the power of the Spirit of God. (Rom. 15:8–12, 15–19; my insertions in italics)

  Now to him who is able to establish you in accordance with my gospel, the message I proclaim about Jesus Christ, in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all the Gentiles [nations] might come to faith and obedience—to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen. (Rom. 16:25–27; my insertions in italics)

The great final vision of the Bible in Revelation goes further still, in seeing not only all the nations of humanity united in praising God, but every creature in the whole creation bringing glory to God.

Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying:

      "To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
         be praise and honor and glory and power,
         for ever and ever!" (Rev. 5:13)

It is not enough, however, to recognize that worship is the ultimate goal of mission, in the sense of bringing all nations to glorify God by worshiping, trusting and obeying him through the gospel of Jesus Christ. We also need to see how worship is part of the means of mission.
Now there is an obvious pragmatic reason for this that we can mention first. Those whose reason for existence on earth is to bring others to praise the living God and pray to him need to be doing so themselves or their whole mission is a hypocritical impossibility. However, a more profound reason is that, since glorifying God and enjoying him forever will be the joyful privilege of the redeemed humanity in the new creation for all eternity, to engage in such praise and prayer here and now is an act of anticipation, a signpost toward the future. And when we do it boldly and affirmatively, we invite others not only into the present experience of worship, but also into the future glory of a redeemed eternity.

  The very nature of God, God's majesty and goodness, evoke adoration and gratitude. Such a response serves to honour God while proclaiming to all who hear that this YHWH God is worthy of one's love and fidelity. Hence praise is not only devotion but also testimony, both an exalting of God and a proclamation that seeks to draw others into the worship of God. (italics added)
Samuel E. Balentine8

So let us trace just a few themes in our biblical theology where praise and prayer can be seen to have missional dimensions.


MISSIONAL PRAISE

Created for Praise
Throughout this book we have been finding answers to the question, "For what do God's people exist?" Thinking of God's people in Old Testament terms, we have seen the crucial importance of God's promise to Abraham that, through him and his descendants, all nations on earth would find blessing. Old Testament Israel, then, was created for the sake of the blessing of all nations of humanity. Israel was the nation that existed for the sake of other nations.
Other texts, however, present a different divine purpose in the creation of Israel:

      … everyone who is called by my name,
         whom I created for my glory,
         whom I formed and made. (Isa. 43:7; italics added)

      … my people, my chosen,
         the people I formed for myself
         that they may proclaim my praise. (Isa. 43:20b–21; italics added)

  "For as a belt is bound around the waist, so I bound the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah to me," declares the LORD, "to be my people for my renown and praise and honor." (Jer. 13:11; italics added)

These texts affirm that God created Israel for the sake of his own glory, to bring him praise. So is there a contradiction here? Was Israel created for the sake of the nations or for the sake of God's glory and praise?
The answer, of course, is—both. For as we have seen, God's ultimate purpose for the blessing of the nations is that they should come to know and glorify him as their greatest good. Thus Israel's existence for that global purpose is bound up with the requirement that they themselves should be a people who embody that knowledge and worship.
This is most succinctly seen in Psalm 100, which puts the fact that Israel is a people created by and belonging to God (v. 3) right in the middle of the summons to worship and praise him that is found on either side (vv. 2 and 4). This is, indeed, universalized horizontally to "all the earth" (v. 1) and vertically to "all generations" (v. 5). In other words, Israel's existence as a people created for the praise of God (vv. 2–4) is bound up with the glory of God that fills all space and all history (vv. 1 and 5).
The mission of God's people, then, is derived from the fact that they were created to bring praise and glory to God and to bring the nations of the world into the same orchestra of doxology.

Redeemed for Praise
The language of creation and redemption blends together rather seamlessly, of course—especially in Isaiah, where Israel is both created and redeemed by God. When we come to the New Testament, the redeeming work of God is linked to the responsibility of bringing praise and glory to God in two key texts from Paul and Peter.

Ephesians 1:3–14
In this most amazing passage (which is incredibly one whole sentence in Greek), Paul uses the phrase "the praise of his glory" three times, in verses 6 (with the addition of "of his grace"), 12 and 14.
In verse 6, Paul is speaking of the love of God that chose us from all eternity to belong to him "for the praise of the glory of His grace" (NASB).
In verse 12 he is almost certainly speaking about Old Testament Israel—the nation from whom came the first people to know about and put their faith in the Messiah Jesus. They had been called "to be for the praise of his glory" (echoing Old Testament texts such as those referred to above).
And then in verse 14 he summarizes the whole work of salvation, which now includes Gentiles as well as Jews ("you also"; v. 13), as being "to the praise of his glory".
This triple emphasis shows how deeply Paul had drunk from the well of Old Testament ecclesiology—Israel's self-understanding of their identity and role as the people of God. Israel had been created and redeemed to bring praise and glory to the living God, and whatever was true of them was inevitably true for Christians—those from all nations who were now being brought into the covenant people of God through Jesus Christ.

  The glory of God is the revelation of God, and the glory of his grace is his self-disclosure as a gracious God. To live to the praise of the glory of his grace is both to worship him ourselves by our words and deeds as the gracious God he is, and to cause others to see and praise him too. This was God's will for Israel in Old Testament days (Isa. 43:21; Jer. 13:11), and it is also his purpose for his people today. (italics added)
John Stott9

In this way, the worshiping life of God's people and their missional function of extending that worship among the nations (such as the cosmopolitan, multiethnic communities of Ephesus) were integral to each other.

1 Peter 2:9–12
Peter makes the same point by a different route and with even more echoes of the Old Testament. Earlier in the chapter he had compared the people of God in Christ both to the Old Testament temple (as "living stones", just as Paul had done in Eph. 2:21–22), and also to the priests who offered sacrifices there (1 Peter 2:5). But what are those "spiritual sacrifices" that Christian believers, God's "royal priesthood" (v. 9), now to offer? They are the worship and praise that they "declare" as part of the "good lives" that they live in the midst of the nations. We need to put the two side by side to see how integral they are (sadly many Bible translations put a paragraph division or new heading before verse 11, obscuring the urgent flow of Peter's point).

  But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.…
  … Live such good lives among the pagans [the nations] that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. (1 Peter 2:9, 12; my insertion in italics)

Peter's thought is so saturated with the Scriptures that almost every phrase he writes has one or more echoes of Old Testament texts. The purpose of being God's people expressed in v. 9—"that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light"—clearly has an exodus allusion in the second half. Christians too have had their taste of God's redemption ("out of … into").
But the first half of the phrase, "that you may declare the praises", probably has two specific Old Testament texts in mind (this is Biblical Theology for Life in action!).
Isaiah 43:21 (quoted above). The word Peter uses, translated "praises" (aretas), is the same as the LXX version of Isaiah 43:21—"that they may proclaim my praise". It is not the commonest word for "praise" in either Testament, and in fact it occurs in the plural like this only four times in the Old Testament—all of them in Isaiah (Isa. 42:8, 12; 43:21; 63:7). It is clear that it refers to praise, not as general affirmations of nice things about God, but specifically as celebrating his great acts of salvation and mercy. And Isaiah, like Peter, envisages such praise as the responsibility of God's people with the clear intention of drawing other people to do the same (in Isa. 42:12, "Let them … proclaim his praise" refers to foreign nations). This is missional praise.
Psalm 9:14. The word Peter uses, translated "declare" (exangello), is the same as the LXX version of Psalm 9:14, "that I may declare your praises?" (v. 15 in LXX). This term refers to the declaration of mighty acts of God (whether his historic acts of redemption for Israel as a whole, or personal acts on behalf of the worshiper), in the context of public worship. Wherever this word is used in the Psalms, it has this sense of public declaration of what God has done, as an act of praise and rejoicing (Pss. 71:15; 73:28; 79:13; 107:22).
So it seems certain then that Peter is making a double point here.
First, he insists that just as Christians inherit the identity and titles of Old Testament Israel (a chosen, priestly, holy people belonging to God), so also they inherit the purpose of Israel's creation and redemption (to declare the praise of God and bring glory to him).
But second, he insists that the purpose of such declarative praise is not a private affair between God and the worshipers, but it spills out into the public arena as one of the means by which God draws the nations to himself. It is in, other words, part of what it means to fulfill the Abrahamic commission of being God's people for the sake of the rest of the nations coming to enjoy God's blessing.
The praise of God's people is missional. The mission of God's people includes doxology.
There is an evangelistic power in public worship that declares the praise of God, which cannot merely be equated with personal evangelism, but certainly complements it. John Dickson makes the point very effectively:

  The theme of promoting the gospel looms large in the middle chapters of 1 Peter. In 2:12 the apostle urges believers to live such good lives that their pagan neighbours would end up giving glory to God (compare Matthew 5:14–16). In 3:1 Peter drives this point home by urging wives to win their unbelieving husbands to faith through godly conduct. Then, just a few paragraphs later in 3:15, he calls on us "to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have" (a statement we'll explore in the next chapter). Given the missionary thrust of these chapters it seems likely that Peter is thinking of some kind of evangelism in the words of 1 Peter 2:9: "declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness."
  But what type of evangelism is Peter talking about? I once assumed (and taught) that the apostle was talking about personal evangelism. I interpreted the phrase "declare the praises" to mean something like tell the gospel to your friends and family. I now think that was probably a bit hasty. The expression "declare the praises" … comes straight out of the Old Testament's description of Israel's public praise, with its creeds, prayers and ever-present psalm-singing.

  Worship involves witness. The factor which unites them is the name of God. For what is worship but to "glory in His holy name", to "praise", "bless", or "stand in awe of" it? And what is witness but to "proclaim the name of the Lord" to others? These expressions are found in the Psalter, and it is in the Psalms that the proper combination of worship and witness is most clearly and commonly found.… Worship is "worthship", an acknowledgement of the worth of Almighty God.… It is therefore impossible for me to worship God and yet not care two cents whether anybody else worships Him too.… Worship which does not beget witness is hypocrisy. We cannot acclaim the worth of God if we have no desire to proclaim it.
John Stott10

  When we remember that the biblical Judaism of Peter's day already thought of its public praise as beneficial to outsiders, it seems far more likely that the apostle is talking in 1 Peter 2:9 not so much about conversational evangelism but about the evangelism that goes on when God's people gather to celebrate in word and song the saving wonders of the Lord.… Peter's words are strongly evangelistic without actually having anything to do with what we call personal evangelism.…
  Declaring God's praises together—in our readings, creeds, preaching, psalms, hymns and spiritual songs—is one of our central acts of worship as the people of God.… One reason for the central importance of praise is God's sheer worthiness; we need no other reason for viewing praise as a high and holy activity. But, given the strong mission theme in 1 Peter, combined with the equally strong Jewish biblical tradition of doxological evangelism, we are probably right to detect a secondary reason for the great importance of public praise. Through it, we announce God's mercy and power to those who overhear us, who have not yet been called out of darkness into his wonderful light.11

Witnessing through Praise

So we were created to bring glory to God our creator. We are redeemed to declare the praises of God our redeemer. And what makes both missional is that we are to do all this in the midst of the nations who do not yet know God as creator and redeemer. Worship and witness are closely intertwined.
That is exactly the thrust of Psalm 96—which I regard as one of the most richly missional songs in the whole Bible. Its opening three verses are a remarkable call to praise, addressed to "all the earth", but clearly intended to be sung (initially at least) by those who have experienced the great realities of which it speaks:

    Sing to the LORD a new song;
      sing to the LORD, all the earth.
    Sing to the LORD, praise his name;
      proclaim his salvation day after day.
    Declare his glory among the nations,
      his marvelous deeds among all peoples. (Ps. 96:1–3)

"Let's sing a new song!" cries the songwriter.
"Sure, what are the lyrics?" we respond.
"Let's sing about the name of YHWH, the salvation of YHWH, the glory of YHWH and the marvelous deeds of YHWH."
"But those are the old songs!" we protest. "Those are the words of all our great songs since Israel was redeemed from Egypt, learned the name of YHWH at Sinai, saw his glory in the tabernacle, and experienced repeated acts of salvation at his hand. What makes this a new song?"
"It may be an old song for us," our psalmist replies, undeterred, "but it will be a new song 'among the nations', 'among all peoples'."
That seems to be the thrust of this great summons. The celebratory worship of Israel will constitute a witness to the nations. The old songs of Israel become the new song of the nations.
But how were the nations to hear, we might wonder? We do not usually think of the Israelites of the Old Testament engaged in cross-cultural missionary evangelism. No, indeed. Even Jonah only fits that description in a reluctant way. But there were at least two ways in which the nations were exposed to the witnessing worship of Israelites.
First, Jerusalem itself was a cosmopolitan city from the days of Solomon on, with people from many of the surrounding nations coming and going—in trading, cultural and political activities. Many of them would have visited the temple and experienced the worship of YHWH, the God of Israelites. Solomon envisaged precisely that in his prayer of dedication of the temple (1 Kings 8:41–43). The Queen of Sheba, the mother of all tourists, is the most illustrious example (1 Kings 10).
Second, from the exile on, there were substantial numbers of Jews living in the communities of the diaspora, throughout Mesopotamia and the eastern Mediterranean lands.12 And we know that the faith, worship and Scriptures of the Jews were a talking point among other peoples, many of whom were attracted and became what the New Testament describes as "God-fearers".
John Dickson, again, who has thoroughly researched Jewish practice during those centuries, points out how the worship of Israel had a missional dimension, long before the New Testament church embarked on the task of itinerant evangelistic mission. Indeed, it is clear that Paul made effective use of this periphery of God-fearing Gentiles in the synagogues he routinely visited in the course of his missionary work:

  One can hardly conceive of more providentially supplied means for the Christian mission to reach the Gentile community [than the Jewish diaspora]. Wherever the community of Christ went it found at hand the tools needed to reach the nations: a people living under covenant promise and responsible election, and the Scriptures, God's revelation to all men.… What Old Testament Israel and the nations could not know, until someone would tell them, was the exceedingly good news of the fulfillment of God's covenant in Christ.
Richard R. De Ridder13

  It may surprise you to know that many Jews in the period between the Old and New Testaments took seriously the idea of public worship as an act of mission. They knew full well that the collective praise of God in the synagogue or the temple was one of God's ways of convincing Gentiles to bow their knee to the Lord. In some cases the Jews had great success. We know that numerous synagogues in the first century attracted great crowds of pagans wanting to know more about the God of the Jews.…
  From the psalm singing of ancient Israel to the synagogue services of Jesus' day, public praise of the true God was believed to serve a missionary function. This was not the purpose of the gatherings—I am not suggesting these were Jewish "seeker services"—but it was considered an important by-product of the corporate praise of God.14

Perhaps this gives us some insight into why it was that the conversion of the continent of Europe began in a prison when two Jews (who had been "severely flogged") "were praying and singing hymns to God and the other prisoners were listening to them" (Acts 16:25); and why the same apostle Paul was sure that if the church in Corinth would worship God aright, any unbeliever who came into their meeting would "fall down and worship God, exclaiming, 'God is really among you' " (1 Cor. 14:25).
That's missional praise.


MISSIONAL PRAYER

Prayer as a Mark of Distinction from the Nations
Israel was intended to be a visible model to the nations. As we saw in chapter 8, this was a significant motivating factor for keeping God's law and living in the way he provided for them. In Deuteronomy 4:6–8, Moses puts the worship of Israel alongside the social justice of their society as distinguishing markers that should arouse the curiosity and admiration of the nations:

  This crucial place of prayer reaffirms the great goal of God to uphold and display his glory for the enjoyment of the redeemed from all the nations.… The missionary purpose of God is as invincible as the fact that he is God. He will achieve his purpose by creating white-hot worshipers from every people, tongue, tribe and nation (Rev. 5:9; 7:9). And he will be engaged to do it through prayer. Therefore, it is almost impossible to overemphasize the awesome place of prayer in the purposes of God for the world.
John Piper15

  Observe them [God's laws] carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, "Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people." What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the LORD our God is near us whenever we pray to him? And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today? (Deut. 4:6–8)

So the prayer life of Israel was intended to be missional. It was a demonstration of the nearness of God. Moses is not suggesting that Israel should pray in order to be seen and admired by others (in conflict with the instructions of Jesus to the contrary), but that the normal exercise of their relationship with God in prayer should form one part of that witness to the reality of the living God for which they were created.

Prayer for the Blessing of the Nations
It seems a long time since we were having lunch with Abraham and his three guests in Genesis 18 (see ch. 5). We paid close attention to verse 19, where God links his missional purpose for blessing all nations to his election of Abraham and the ethical contrast between Abraham's future community and the world characterized by Sodom. Abraham was told to teach his own household, but the first thing he did in the wake of God's revelation of his plans to him was to pray for the city.
Abraham's intercession for Sodom is a remarkable passage (Gen. 18:22–33). It provides yet another way in which Abraham was a model for his descendants—physical and spiritual. Knowing that Sodom stood in the blast path of God's judgment did not make him turn away, but made him turn to prayer. Moses and Daniel were among those who followed his example on behalf of Israel in similar plight (Ex. 32–34; Dan. 9). Intercessory prayer for the nations is an essential part of mission to the nations.
The Israelites knew they could pray anywhere, for God was everywhere, as David knew to his comfort (Ps. 139), and Jonah proved in possibly the strangest place prayer has ever been offered (Jonah 2:1). But above all they prayed in the temple because it was, by God's intention, "a house of prayer". We know it also, of course, as the place of sacrifice. But it is a remarkable fact that on the great occasion of its dedication by Solomon, not a word is said about sacrifices in Solomon's speeches on that day (though sacrifices were offered), but a great deal is said about prayer.
In fact, Solomon's prayer at the dedication of the temple is a prayer about prayer! He envisages a variety of situations in which Israel would particularly pray to God in the temple, or "toward" it—situations in which Solomon then asks God to hear and answer their prayers (1 Kings 8:22–53).
But then, as we saw in chapter 8, Solomon extends the focus of his prayer to the people of other nations, who will also turn up at the temple to pray. As we said above, Jerusalem was a cosmopolitan city, full of foreigners for all kinds of reasons. What if they decide to bring their requests to YHWH the God of Israel?
"Do whatever the foreigners ask of you," prays Solomon—asking God to do for foreigners what God had never promised in such terms to do for Israel. It is a remarkable prayer for God to hear and answer the prayers of the nations, and the reason Solomon suggests to support the request goes right to God's missional heart, "so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your own people Israel" (1 Kings 8:43). Here is the Abrahamic commission translated into missional prayer. Solomon prays for the nations, that they will pray to YHWH God, and prays to God that he will answer them, for his own name's sake. This is surely one of the most missional moments in the Old Testament—at least until we come to this next one.
In Jeremiah 29, Jeremiah is not praying but writing a letter in which he urges other people to pray. In fact, he is writing to Israelites who are in one of the situations described by Solomon in his prayer—"When they sin against you—for there is no one who does not sin—and you become angry with them and give them over to their enemies, who take them captive to their own lands, far away or near" (1 Kings 8:46). Yes, Israel is in exile in Babylon. And they doubtless are praying to God in desperation for themselves and for some hope of future return. But that is not what Jeremiah tells them to pray for. Amazingly he instructs them to pray for Babylon! Pray for their enemies! Seek their šalom.
Jeremiah 29:7 provides chapter and verse (except they didn't have them at the time!) for the teaching of Jesus: "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you" (Luke 6:27–28; italics added).
As we saw in chapter 13, this instruction of Jeremiah is part of a strong biblical tradition that the people of God exist in the world to bring the blessing of God, the presence of God, the power of God, into the public arena—even in the heart of enemy territory. Prayer is one powerful means of doing that.
Solomon, then, prays that foreigners will pray to God for themselves while Jeremiah asks Israel to pray to God for foreigners. Both believed that God would answer such prayer for the glory of his name and for the šalom of both those who pray and those who are prayed for.
That's missional prayer.

Prayer as Subversion of the Idolatry of the Nations
I like to think, as I said before, that Daniel heard that letter from Jeremiah when it was read to the first wave of exiles (for he and his young friends were among that first group of exiles). And I like to think that he took it seriously and included prayer for Babylon in his habit of thrice-daily prayer. I find such a conjecture as at least a reasonable explanation for his apparent affection for Nebuchadnezzar and desire to help him avoid God's judgment (Dan. 4; see ch. 13).
However, there is an even stronger element to the prayer of Daniel in Daniel 6. It circumvents the idolatrous hubris of the king. You recall that Darius, giving in to the flattery of those in his government who simply wanted to get Daniel out of the way so that his diligence and integrity would not block their own corrupt ambitions, passed a decree that for a month everybody in his kingdom should pray to no god other than himself. It was an absurd decree, when you think about it. First, it claimed deity for the king himself—always a dangerous project as we have known since Pharaoh tried it in Egypt.
But second, it is symptomatic of a diluted view of what it means to be "god"—as if any other gods that happened to be around in the multiethnic religious plurality of the Persian empire would politely have a moratorium on their own prayer-answering credentials for a few weeks and allow all requests to be diverted to this upstart human king and wannabe god. Yet, for all its absurdity, it is typical of the arrogance of state power. States like to posture as the sole source of all benefit to their citizens and to demand in return ultimate loyalty. We may not quite deify our kings or presidents, but we easily turn patriotism into a creed and alleged lack of it into a heresy.
But what did Daniel do, faced with this demand to acknowledge no god but the king he was otherwise serving so efficiently? He subverted it. He went on praying to the one whom he knew to be the only living God. Whether he knew it would get him into trouble or not, he made no effort to conceal it (Dan. 6:10; all he had to do, after all, was close his windows!).
For Darius was not God. The Persian empire was not God. Only YHWH was God, and the act of prayer was an act that relativized and subverted all human political authority.
Prayer is to say, "There is a higher throne." Prayer appeals to a higher authority. Prayer is, in short, a political act. It affirms that all human political power is subordinate not ultimate, relative not absolute—to be obeyed so long as it is consistent with obedience to the living God (as it had clearly been so far for Daniel), but to be disobeyed whenever it presumes to command what God prohibits or to prohibit what God commands.
The response of Daniel is mirrored in the response of the earliest followers of Jesus (not yet even called "Christians") when faced with the explicit command of the authorities to stop speaking about Jesus. They turn to prayer. And in their prayer they robustly affirm the sovereignty of God over heaven and earth and over all nations and their rulers, and they pray for boldness to disobey the state in order to obey Jesus (Acts 4:23–31).
That's missional prayer too.

Prayer and the Work of Mission
When we turn to the New Testament, we find prayer as the saturating medium of the mission of Jesus, of the church in Acts, and of Paul's instructions to the churches in relation to his own missionary work.

Jesus
Few things confirm and illustrate the incarnate humanity of the Son of God in the person of Jesus of Nazareth than his life of prayer. "I and the Father are one," he could say, and yet that did not dissolve the reality of his human dependence on his Father and the need for prayer.
His earthly mission began at his baptism, and it was while he was praying that the wonderfully Trinitarian moment of affirmation of his identity occurred (Luke 3:21). If he was fasting in the wilderness at the time of his struggle and testing there, it is certain that he was also praying. The pressure of his healing ministry did not drive out his times of prayer (Mark 1:35). The choice of twelve disciples for their mission was made after a night of prayer (Luke 6:12–14). Their early missionary training was carried out with Jesus engaged in spiritual warfare on their behalf (Luke 10:17–21). Peter's faith survived the collapse of his courage because Jesus prayed for him so that his mission could continue beyond his repentance (Luke 22:31–32). His last evening with the disciples before his death included prayer for them and for the church's ongoing mission to the world (John 17). Gethsemane was above all else an agony of prayer. Not even the cruelty of crucifixion could stop him praying.

  Why is prayer so critical for mission? [Colossians 4:2–4] provides the answer. In prayer we lift the work of the gospel above mere circumstances and into the hands of the One who governs everything … [the One who can provide] an "open door", even though the current messenger is locked up "in chains".
John Dickson16

And of course, Jesus taught his disciples to pray. But although it would be instructive to work through the Lord's Prayer as a fundamentally missional prayer, we can take note here of what my colleague Hugh Palmer17 calls, "The other Lord's Prayer". In fact, as he points out, it is the only other time in the Gospels when Jesus explicitly tells the disciples what to pray. And it is unmistakably missional—in context and content.

  When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field." (Matt. 9:36–38)

Why, asks Hugh Palmer, do we use the "Our Father" prayer so regularly in Christian liturgy, and this "other Lord's Prayer" so spasmodically? What might have been the story of Christian mission if this prayer had become the one we had memorized and repeated (and meant) down through the centuries? Of course, it's a dangerous prayer to pray. It tends to become self-answering, as the disciples found. For if they did do as Jesus told them, the very next thing that happens is that they become the answer to their own prayer as Jesus sends them out (Matt. 10).

Acts
It would consume more space than we can afford to list all the instances of prayer in the book of Acts, but it would make an instructive personal study to go through the book taking note of every occasion—noting especially how closely prayer is bound up with the mission of the church. A few examples give the flavour.
Even before Pentecost, having been told by the risen Christ that they were to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth, the first response of the disciples was to gather for prayer (Acts 1:12–14). Prayer was a fundamental ingredient of the growing number of believers (2:42). It was their response to opposition and persecution (4:23–31; 12:12), their first act in situations of new evangelism (8:14–15). It was in the context of worship, prayer and fasting that the church at Antioch was led by the Holy Spirit to initiate the first intentionally centrifugal Gentile mission (13:1–3). Prayer was the first evangelistic action on the soil of Europe (16:13), and a miraculously effective one when combined with late night singing (13:25).

Paul
Paul had unbounded faith in the power of God and in the power of the gospel. But he also knew the power of prayer. And he knew that all three mysteriously worked together in the accomplishment of God's mission. His own personal survival depended on God's deliverance—"helped", as he put it, by the prayers of others. We all know what it is to ask others to pray for us in times of trouble or danger, but for Paul it was particularly focused on his desire to be delivered in order that he could carry on his missionary task of proclaiming the gospel (2 Cor. 1:9–11; Phil. 1:19–26).
Even his prayers for deliverance were connected to asking the churches to pray for his boldness in evangelistic proclamation. Again, a moment to read the following three prayers would be a moment well spent (2 Thess. 3:1–2; Col. 4:2–3; Eph. 6:18–20).
There has been some debate as to why Paul's instructions about prayer do not specifically call for prayer for evangelistic mission more frequently than this. Was it because Paul did not expect his churches to be engaged in evangelistic witness? That has been argued, but decisively refuted in my view.18 More likely is the view of D. A. Carson that, for Paul, mission and prayer were both alike comprehensive realities. There should be all kinds of prayer for all kinds of mission.
Our tendency is to compartmentalize the various tasks entrusted by God to the church as a whole, and to label some of them as "mission" and give other names to other things, and then to assign special prayer to one or the other. But this does not reflect New Testament realities:

  We have tended to think of mission as a discrete project (or as discrete projects), often of a cross-cultural kind, with the result that special prayer for this isolable function is called for. But apart from the special calling on his own life as an apostle (indeed as the apostle to the Gentiles), Paul sees mission in holistic, even cosmic terms. The glory of God, the reign of Christ, the declaration of the mystery of the gospel, the conversion of men and women, the growth and edification of the church, the defeat of cosmic powers, the pursuit of holiness, the passion for godly fellowship and unity in the church, the unification of Jews and Gentiles, doing good to all, but especially to fellow believers—these are all woven into a seamless garment. All the elements are held together by a vision in which God is at the centre and Jesus Christ effects the changes for his glory and his people's good. This means that thanksgiving and intercessory prayer, though sweeping in the range of topics touched, are held together by a unified, God-centred, vision. Our more piecemeal approach looks for certain kinds of links which for the apostle are embedded in a comprehensive vision.19

That is a fine statement of some key elements of the holistic mission of God's people that I have been arguing for throughout this book, following the contours of the Bible's story line. Prayer accompanies the whole Bible story—from the prayer of Abraham for Sodom in Genesis to the prayers of the saints and martyrs in Revelation.

Prayer as Spiritual Warfare
Prayer accompanies the Bible story precisely because it is the story of war—the great battle throughout history in which God relentlessly drives back the forces of evil and darkness, decisively defeated them at the cross of Christ, and will utterly eliminate them at the climactic end of the story. This is a war whose outcome is assured, guaranteed by the very "Godness" of God. God will have the victory.
Prayer is participation in that ultimate victory and in the struggle that leads to it. For this is the mission of God, and the mission of God's people is to be coworkers with God in the field that is God's world. If the battle is the Lord's, then those who are involved in the battle need to stay in constant intimate communication with their commander. This is clear even in the ministry of Jesus, which from beginning to end involved combat with the evil one and his demonic minions. And prayer was his most effective weapon—ours, too.

  God has ordained prayer to have a crucial place in the mission of the church. The purpose of prayer is to make clear to all the participants in this war that the victory belongs to the Lord. Prayer is God's appointed means of bringing grace to us and glory to himself.… That is why the missionary enterprise advances by prayer. The chief end of God is to glorify God. He will do this in the sovereign triumph of his missionary purpose that the nations worship him. He will secure this triumph by entering into the warfare and becoming the main combatant. And he will make that engagement plain to all the participants through prayer, because prayer shows that the power is from the Lord.…
  Prayer is the walkie-talkie of the church on the battlefield of the world in the service of the Word. It is not a domestic intercom to increase the temporal comforts of the saints.… It is for those on active duty. And in their hands it proves the supremacy of God in the pursuit of the nations. When mission moves forward by prayer, it magnifies the power of God. When it moves by human management, it magnifies man.
John Piper20

So it is not surprising then that Paul follows his instructions about putting on the armour of the Lord for spiritual warfare in Ephesians 6 with immediate reference to prayer. In fact, Ephesians 6:10–20 is one of those amazing single sentences of Paul, which begins with the reminder that "our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms", but then does not stop its list of instructions for combat readiness until we are told to "pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord's people."

  Spiritual warfare is not about naming territorial spirits, claiming the ground or binding demons. It is all about the gospel. It is to live a gospel life, to preserve gospel unity and to proclaim gospel truth. It is to do this in the face of a hostile world, a deceptive enemy and our own sinful natures. And it is to pray to a sovereign God for gospel opportunities. Advance comes through godliness, unity, proclamation and prayer.
Timothy Chester, on Ephesians 621

Prayer is as much part of our armour and weaponry as truth, righteousness, faith and salvation. And such prayer is essentially missional, for it accompanies the battle for the gospel. Peter O'Brien, indeed, refers to this great climax of Ephesians as "The Pauline Great Commission":

  Our circumstances may be vastly different from Paul's; our spiritual gifts and opportunities may vary significantly from his. But we are involved in the same spiritual warfare as the apostle, we have the same injunction laid upon us to stand firm, the same divine weapons available for us to use (especially the essential spiritual weapon of prayer), and the same defensive and offensive postures to adopt. We are to resist temptation and to devote our lives energetically to spreading the gospel. These are not optional extras. They are musts and this is why the apostle's words about sharing the gospel effectively in the power of the Spirit wherever we find ourselves may be styled "The Pauline Great Commission".22


SUMMARY

Praise and prayer—two of the most fundamental activities of the people of God, two things by which they are most identified, and two things through which they engage in their mission as God's people—whatever other activities such mission may also include, as we have seen all through this book. In this chapter we have observed as a theme of biblical theology that praise is what we were created for and redeemed for, and it is our missional task to share in God's will that all peoples and all creation should come to praise and worship him, to find their greatest joy in glorifying him. And we have seen that prayer weaves its way through the whole Bible as a mark of God's people, undergirding their mission, and in some circumstances even constituting a dimension of their mission.
Samuel Balentine has a fine conclusion to his survey of the biblical theology of prayer in the Old Testament. He argues that the role of the church, as a "house of prayer" that has inherited one of the prime functions of the temple, is "to keep the community and the world in God" and "to keep God in the community and the world". If our mission is indeed to share in the mission of the God who so loved the world that he gave his own Son to save it and ultimately to dwell again within it, then this is a challenging way to express the purpose of prayer. Balentine's closing words to the church are a fitting challenge with which to finish this chapter too:

  What if we do not exercise our God-given responsibility as a community of faith? What if we do not pray to keep ourselves and our world in God? What if we do not pray and fight to keep God in the world? I submit that if we do not, either the church will become a den of robbers where thieves congregate to count their loot and hide out from God, or it will become a shining, splendid edifice, pointing to the heavens but counting for nothing on earth. In either case, God is anguished and the world is impoverished.

      I was ready to respond, but no one asked,
      ready to be found, but no one sought me.
      I said, "Here I am, here I am,"
      to a nation that did not call on my name. (Isa. 65:1)23


RELEVANT QUESTIONS

    1.      What changes (of understanding and of practice) might reading this chapter make in your personal prayer life?
   
    2.      How has your understanding of "missional prayer" expanded beyond regarding it as "praying for missionaries" (vital though that is)?
   
    3.      Are churches making a false dichotomy when they think of "doing worship" and "doing mission"? Without transforming all our public worship into "seeker-sensitive" mode, how should we strengthen the missional dimension of our church's public worship (again, both in the way we understand it and the way we do it)?


Wright, C. J. H. (2010). The Mission of God's People: A Biblical Theology of the Church's Mission. Biblical Theology for Life (244–262). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

--
Regards,
Ryan Chia

Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Mission exists
because worship doesn't. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is
ultimate, not man.

*From John Piper, Let The Nations Be Glad*